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Is your company using social media to provide a better customer service experience and respond to customer outreach? Many are not! As Ferris Bueller said “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” And if you are not paying attention to your customers use of social media get customers service issues resolved, then you could be caught with your corporate pants down!
42% of consumers who complain on social media expect a response in under sixty minutes. (Source: Edison Research) So, do you really need to worry about using social media for your company’s customer service program? Why staff a socially savvy group of service reps when you already have a web site, email and a phone? Well, if your customer service program is like Cameron’s (from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off) home “”The place is like a museum. It’s very beautiful and very cold, and you’re not allowed to touch anything”, then you need to reconsider your strategy.
Your customers are on a changing customer service-seeking journey and are abandoning the old-school waiting for the “customer-service desk” experience. They are tweeting themselves to the front of the virtual customer service line. And, with 95% of people commiserating with others about their sub-par customer-service experiences, then that would mean a resounding … you need to do something about it!
Zendesk, a cloud-based customer service software platform, thought that finding out this information was so important that they commissioned Dimensional Research. Customers also share great experiences too, with 87% sharing good interactions with others. So, it’s not all bad news....
Defining Strategy Ahead of Time can Save You A Lot of Time in the Future
Any solid startup strategy will include a plan for customer acquisition and systems which are built to scale. Success will make team growth inevitable, but it can be devastatingly difficult to rebuild a system that’s reached critical mass.
However, entrepreneur and venture capitalist David Skok has found that the success of your company relies on two factors, regardless of any external forces: - Finding a scalable way to acquire customers - Monetizing customers at a higher rate than your cost of customer acquisition.
A successful content marketing plan can seamlessly scale with other projects, but it will be much more difficult to gain traction online in the first place if you delay getting started....
The benefits of video in the ecommerce arena are well known – no other approach generates engagement and sharing, boosts search traffic and conversions to the levels that video does. But there's more to video than just creating and posting product information. Are you doing everything you can to make the most of these incredibly valuable assets?
Because video does such a great job of attracting and holding consumer attention, it can contribute to a wide range of successful marketing initiatives aimed at everyone from current customers to new prospects.
For example, video can be used in a bounceback strategy – promoting relevant products to consumers who have already visited or made purchases at your site. And its strong search value can be used to hook consumers who are researching potential purchases on the web.
In addition, try these five ideas for making video a powerful contributor to your successful campaigns....
In anticipation of The Mashies, Mashable is running a weekly series celebrating some advertising "firsts." Watch for new installments in the series every week. As opposed to other advertising "firsts" like the first TV ad or the first print execution, bringing banner ads into the world seems like a dubious accolade.
Joe McCambley, the guy often credited with inventing the ad unit in October 1994, is somewhat conflicted about it. He recently wrote a Harvard Business Review op-ed arguing that after a promising debut, banners were a spent force by 1998: "We were back to delivering what TV spots, radio spots, and print ads had delivered for years: sales messages," he wrote. "The rest, as they say, is history."...
What do you do when you have a problem with a brand’s product or service?You go online, right?
You’re not alone. Close to six in ten (57 percent) of customers search for a solution online before taking any further action, and they’re increasingly reaching for a brand’s social media outposts. Almost half of social media users (47 percent) have received customer care on a channel such as Twitter or Facebook, and 37 percent now prefer customer service through social media rather than by telephone.
But brands still have work to do. While 80 percent of Twitter users expect a response to a consumer service enquiry within a day, just 40 percent of tweets to the 25 largest online retailers are answered within 24 hours, and many are ignored altogether....
Online marketing has grown in leaps and bounds. Today, there is a vast number of tools and resources that can help you jumpstart your online marketing campaign. I would wish to cover each and every useful tool and technique. But for the sake of time, I will delve straight into some powerful internet marketing tactics that you can use to grow your business in 2013.
If your 'About' page ain't too nifty, check out these examples and fix it up in a jiffy. When you’re building a website, it’s tempting to get distracted by all the bells and whistles of the design process and forget all about creating compelling content. But having awesome content on your website is crucial to making inbound marketing work for your business. So how do you balance your remarkable content creation with your website design needs? Why, with your 'About Us' page, of course! For a remarkable 'About Us' page, all you need to do is figure out your company's unique identity, and then share it with the world....
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Social media marketing is not just a trendy word, it is fast becoming and in some cases already is a viable acquisition channel for most businesses.
In fact, Hubspot reports that 70% of business-to-consumer marketers have acquired a customer through Facebook. If you are still having trouble convincing your boss that social media is worth the investment, here are 28 must see statistics for 2013 to make him/her jump on board....
Earlier this July, video technology company Unruly released the results of its 20-page study, “The Science of Sharing,” measuring the viral effects of 12 Super Bowl commercials. Using a complex algorithm from their sharing analysis tool, ShareRank, Unruly was able to identify the parts of each video that triggered the strongest viewer responses, and grade the advertisements on their overall shareability (see below). By doing this, Unruly was able to give an in-depth look at why some viral ads perform well online, while others don’t. ...
Fake web traffic has long plagued the online publishing world, but Dr. Paul Barford, computer science professor at the University of Wisconsin, is claiming the problem might be worse than suspected. And it's costing some of the top online advertisers millions in wasted ad impressions.
Dr. Barford, who is also the chief scientist at startup MdotLabs, is slated to present a study at an Internet security symposium Wednesday in Washington, D.C., where he we will claim that 10 traffic networks are serving up more than 500 million invalid ad impressions a month.
"We estimate the cost to advertisers for this fraudulent traffic to be on the order of $180 million annually," he said in a statement in advance of the presentation.
Dr. Barford reached his conclusion by posing as a web publisher and signing up for several different traffic generation services, also called PPV networks, which he filtered through software that uses anomaly detection to identify fake website traffic....
The BBC's Jill Martin visits US clothing company Lolly Wolly Doodle, which is helping to lead the way in selling directly through Facebook.
As a family-run company with just 160 employees and a funny name, US children's clothing manufacturer Lolly Wolly Doodle (LWD) does not immediately seem like a trendsetter.Yet the North Carolina firm and its owner Brandi Temple are at the forefront of how small retailers are increasingly selling their wares directly through Facebook.
Billionaire investor Steve Case, the co-founder of US internet group AOL, is so impressed with LWD and its "Facebook commerce" business model that earlier this year his Revolution Growth fund invested $20m (£13m) in the company.
He says that LWD has the potential to be a billion-dollar business.Mr Case adds: "Ms Temple really had pioneered the whole area of social shopping. It's really bringing consumers almost into the design process."For most people focused on e-commerce, social is an afterthought. For her, it's the main event. I think that's unique."...
Brands like Amazon, Netflix, OKCupid, Pandora and Twitter are tracking customers’ online behavior to produce targeted offerings and increase sales. What stats are they looking at and offering as a result, you may ask? This infographic tells all....
Twitter’s latest ad product provides a call to action right inside a tweet — showing the company is finally creating marketing tools closer to the “bottom of the funnel.” Even as Twitter has grown into a media and marketing giant, not everyone is persuaded that the social media site is useful for selling things. As one marketer recently lamented to me, the platform’s effectiveness is hard to measure — and justify to clients — because “no one’s going to buy a car off Twitter.” [Update: Twitter says "au contraire" and sent this research] The perception, then, is that Twitter is useful for what the ad types call “top of the funnel” marketing — building brand awareness and so on — but that it has yet to deliver paying customers in the way that GoogleAdwords can. Today, though, it appears Twitter has responded with a new ad product that will make it easier for brands to assess what they get for their marketing bucks. The product, called a “Lead Generation Card,” lets marketers post expanded tweets that invite users to sign up for stuff right inside Twitter. The company showed what this might look in a blog post describing the product...
Having a web presence is no longer option; companies must actively try to reach potential customers using the power of the Internet. Further, companies should try to integrate as many different venues of web development as possible to reach as many demographics as they can. Here are four steps to increasing your web presence.
1. Start and maintain a blog
Blogs are a great way to reach new customers. It is important that the blog is not used as an overt sales platform; it must be primarily informative or entertain. With regular updates, it is possible to gain a large and loyal following who will provide links from their own websites or blogs. You can also use traditional techniques for gaining new readers such as link exchanges, guest posts and commenting on other blogs. Blogs also grant a bit of freedom, so do not be afraid to use it to take some risks.
2. Double down on social media
By now, most companies and businesses have a presence on social media. Many, however, have not put forth the effort necessary to make their social media properties work for them as well as possible. Consider running promotions to get more followers; discounts or even free products can help. Promising to donate a certain amount of money to a charity once the account reaches a particular milestone can help as well. The best long-term strategy, however, is to post entertaining or informative information on the page. The ultimate goal should be to get followers to share your posts with their friends.
3. Give video a shot
Internet video is constantly becoming more popular. With the increased bandwidth of typical Internet connections and the availability of video-hosting services, the Internet has the infrastructure and the technological capability necessary to spread videos far and wide. Companies can check out an official host review to see if a particular host has the capabilities to match their needs. By using videos, those running a company can give it a personal touch that text cannot match. Video also reaches out to Internet users who would rather watch a video than read an article.
4. Target mobile Internet users
The fastest-growing demographic on the Internet is users with mobile devices. These devices, however, are not simply smaller laptops; their capabilities are advanced, but their screen sizes are too small to display normal websites, and their input methods are radically different from the mouse and keyboard standard. By specifically targeting mobile platforms, a company can tap into a large segment of users. The Internet provides a tremendous number of users, and this base of users is growing every day. With a bit of labor and some creativity, it is possible to tap large segments of the Internet’s population who have not yet been reached in an effective manner.
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What if Ferris Bueller gave small biz tips on the challenge of online customer service? this is a funny post with a lot of good information about the challenges of delivering customer service online.